4.3.2 Leave to amend to include ground 5 insofar as it relates to the daughter and son must be refused
33 The third and fourth appellants submit that they are in exactly the same position as the appellant in FER17 (FCC) because their parents were Sri Lankan but they were born outside Sri Lanka as the IAA found. They also submit that although this claim was not raised before the IAA, the Full Court's decision represented a change in the law which post-dated the IAA's decision. As such, they argue that they should not be deprived of the benefit of the Full Court's decision given in particular the seriousness of the consequences to them if the IAA's decision is upheld and they are returned to Sri Lanka. They accepted, however, that they had not claimed to be stateless before the IAA.
34 In my view, those submissions should not be accepted and the application for leave to amend to include proposed ground 5, refused.
35 First, as earlier explained, ground 5 raises a new issue which had been abandoned at trial.
36 Secondly, as the appellants submit, the decision in FER17 (FCC) which was delivered on 20 December 2018 post-dated the IAA's decision which was notified on 5 April 2018 (AB433). However, the decision in FER17 (FCC) was delivered before the hearing in the FCC in this matter on 11 April 2019. Given that the Full Court upheld the decision of FER17 (FCC) in those respects which are relevant to the present appeal, the fact that the Full Court's decision in FER17 (FCAFC) was delivered on 24 June 2019 and therefore after the FCC decision here does not explain why the appellants did not raise the issue in the FCC. In this regard, I note that the appellants had legal representation in the FCC. As such, no adequate explanation has been given for the failure by the appellants to raise the issue in the FCC.
37 Thirdly, I do not consider that the ground insofar as it concerns the third and fourth appellants has any real merit. In contrast to FER17 (FCAFC), in the present case the daughter and son did not claim to be stateless. While they did not answer the question in the visa application form asking them to state their citizenship, they asked for their claims also to be assessed against Sri Lanka as the receiving country and there was nothing in the material before the IAA to alert it to any claim of statelessness.
38 Fourthly, there is a real possibility that the Minister may have conducted his case differently in the FCC if ground 5 had been pressed in the FCC. In this regard, while proof of foreign law is itself a question of fact, the Minister's counsel accepted for the purposes of the appeal that Sri Lankan law was as stated in s 5(2) of the Citizenship Act 1948 (Sri Lanka) (the Sri Lankan Citizenship Act) upon which the IAA had relied in FER17, namely:
Subject to the other provisions of this Part, a person born outside Sri Lanka on or after the appointed date shall have the status of a citizen of Sri Lanka if at the time of his birth either of his parents is or was a citizen of Sri Lanka and if, within one year from the date of birth, or within such further period as the Minister may for good cause allow, the birth is registered in the prescribed manner:
(a) at the office of a consular officer of Sri Lanka in the country of birth; or
(b) at the office of the Minister in Sri Lanka.
(As quoted in FER17 (FCC) at [21])
39 Nonetheless, the Minister submitted that proposed ground 5, insofar as it related to the daughter and son, would still have raised factual questions "of whether or not their births were registered and at what point in time and what the consequence of registration may have been if it occurred by reason of section 5(2) of the Sri Lankan Citizenship Act". In other words, the Minister submitted that ground 5 could not be determined without further evidence as to how s 5(2) of the Sri Lankan Citizenship Act applied to the daughter and son. Accordingly, if the issue had been raised below, the Minister submitted that he may have run his case differently. Specifically, counsel for the Minister submitted that:
MR KNOWLES: … it's not entirely theoretical that even if this had - claim had been run in the Federal Circuit Court, there would be a question of whether there's sufficient factual foundation to establish error on the part of the Authority, but even if it had been, one might imagine enquiries being made or questions being asked in the court below as to whether the birth had been registered, or whether the birth of the children were registered within a particular time. That's - - -
HER HONOUR: In cross-examination, you mean.
MR KNOWLES: Yes.
HER HONOUR: By the Minister. That he would explore these questions - might explore these questions.
MR KNOWLES: I've raised it - I don't - I can't put it higher than a possibility is that the Minister may have put on evidence but it wouldn't normally be the Minister's practice in the case of refugee applicants to make approaches of foreign country's governments and ask questions about applicants claiming to fear persecution.
40 In this regard, as the High Court said in Coulton at 7-8, "[i]n a case where, had the issue been raised in the court below, evidence could have been given which by any possibility could have prevented the point from succeeding, this Court has firmly maintained the principle that the point cannot be taken afterwards …" (emphasis added).